Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig exploded onto the baseball landscape in his rookie year in 2013 thanks to a dizzying combination of natural athletic ability, talent, and an exuberant, hyper-aggressive style of play that proved controversial among fans, media and opponents who found his antics disrespectful to the game.

But no less a baseball icon than Ken Griffey Jr., who finished his career in 2010 with 630 home-runs and a surefire Hall of Fame candidacy, faced similar criticism in his early days in the game.

Griffey debuted in MLB as a teenager in 1989 and quickly established himself as one of his generation’s foremost all-around talents, but caught flak – most notably from former Yankees manager and current Orioles skipper Buck Showalter – for an indiscretion that seems remarkably silly in retrospect: Habitually wearing his cap backwards before and after games.

“I start laughing,” Griffey said on Wednesday when asked about those judgments. “What’s the one thing you want to do as a kid? You want to wear your dad’s stuff, whether it’s his shoes, his shirt, his hat — you put it all on.

“My dad, at the time, had a ‘fro, and his hat was too big for my head. I always put it on, and the front of it would hit me on the face, so I wore it backwards. And it just stuck. I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful.”

The 13-time All-Star spoke as part of a 25th anniversary celebration for trading-card company Upper Deck, which made Griffey’s rookie card the first in its inaugural series in 1989. And Griffey suggested that the accusations against Puig came from a combination of his success and his location.

(PHOTO: Christopher Hanewinckel/USA TODAY Sports)

“Being in L.A., he has a little more media attention than I did up in the great Northwest,” Griffey said. “He’s young, and they’re not used to seeing that much talent in one person.

“He hasn’t done really anything wrong, he’s just young, and being aggressive — and you want that, but you want that filtered in the right way. And I think [Dodgers manager Don Mattingly] is doing a great job of it.”

Griffey smoothed things over with Showalter at the 1994 All-Star Game, when the manager said he never intended for his comments to make headlines. And he thinks things will become easier for Puig as the 23-year-old Cuban defector matures in the game.

“He’s trying to help his ballclub win, and sometimes you take chances,” Griffey said. “So it’s just an adjustment on his part. That’s learning.”

Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig exploded onto the baseball landscape in his rookie year in 2013 thanks to a dizzying combination of natural (…)

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